


always wanting to

by preromantics



Category: Generation Kill
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-30
Updated: 2010-12-30
Packaged: 2017-10-14 06:07:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,817
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/146196
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/preromantics/pseuds/preromantics
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>If he thinks about it, he'll fucking do it -- he'll grab a flight and see if Nate's skin is still warm and gritty with a permanent coat of desert sand under his shirt, if his lips are still soft, impossibly so, ridiculous porn-fantasy-junior-high-fucking-backseat-make-out soft.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	always wanting to

Brad never thinks about Nate on the east coast, he never thinks about how he could get on his bike and ride to LAX at anytime and no one would question it, how he doesn't need an order to go see him.

If he thinks about it, he'll fucking do it -- he'll grab a flight and see if Nate's skin is still warm and gritty with a permanent coat of desert sand under his shirt, if his lips are still soft, impossibly so, ridiculous porn-fantasy-junior-high-fucking-backseat-make-out soft. He'll see if Nate's fingers still remember the bruises they left on Brad's hip, bent into each other in the dark, hands rough and fast. 

He'll see if Nate's eyes are still wide and frozen in the same look Brad saw last: questioning, proud, relieved, wanting. Brad knows he was probably a mirror of the same, leaving to go his own way, thankful above anything else for the time he was about to get off. 

Brad spends a good portion of his time not thinking about Nate across the country. He goes back out for five months, spends at least two-thirds of his combat jacks thinking about inane parts of Nate (the pads of his fingers, the tender spot under his ear, his eyelashes, coated with dust and sand, fanned out along his cheekbones), and he thinks about how he knew Nate better than roughly 95% of people he'd ever had an orgasm with and yet he didn't know him enough at all. 

He thinks too much about Nate. He thinks about how he'd written his number on Nate's palm with half the boys watching, acting drunker than he was. He called the number out as a pizza place he'd memorized while the guys yelled variations of  _bad luck, LT,_  and Brad had pretended he didn't see the way Nate flexed his hand around the drag of numbers in ink, about how when they all shipped out, Brad could see the numbers nearly-faded on Nate's palm. 

  
-

  
Nate didn't call. That was okay, though, because Brad didn't need phone calls and the east coast and Nate Fick's mouth and eyes and his quiet (and sometimes not) determination. He didn't need Nate's life, and everything in it, and how different it was from Brad's. 

(Brad got more than enough phone calls from Ray to make up for the lack from Nate, something he could have done with out -- yet, somehow, they were welcome, anyway. Welcome in all their illiterate-backwoods conversation schemes, talk about all the (nonexistent, in Brad's opinion) stateside pussy everyone in Bravo was getting, according to the grapevine. Brad wasn't getting any, which used to mean he needed to re-evaluate his looks or at least his clothing choices -- but now. 

When Brad was talking to someone else, he wasn't thinking of Nate, he wasn't thinking of things no one told him he could have but he took anyway, and things he still wanted. So he didn't mind Ray talking his ear off, or the calls from the other guys, or occasionally meeting up for drinks.)

He was making do. He was running laps down Sunset Blvd living half of the American dream, and he wanted to be back almost a year ago with fucktards telling him what to do, with no batteries, with gunshot lullabies to fall asleep to, with his LT's skin golden in the sun like a fucking non-existent God, out among the plebeians, Brad's hands waiting for his skin and curling restlessly around heavy artillery instead. 

("I'd take offense or think you were jerking off to the sound of my voice if you were anyone else but the Iceman, with the way you're always so fucking silent when I call," Ray says, one afternoon on the phone. He's talking about going out later, about how he's going to come visit soon, how Brad's couch better be more comfortable than dirt or it won't be worth the trip. 

"I'm running," Brad says, shrugging. He isn't, although he's looking at the treadmill he'd bought just to have something to do, and he's considering it. 

"Where?" Ray asks, and if he doesn't believe Brad, he doesn't say shit, which is worth more than a lot of things to Brad right now. 

"Treadmill," Brad says. He's only wearing one sock, somehow, and can't remember where the matching one is, and his one bare foot catches his eye. There isn't anyone in his apartment to police him on dress, though and that -- that sometimes still startles Brad, how he's basically two different people sometimes, in two different worlds, and the middle ground is increasingly hard to find. He doesn't think about how he's pretty certain the middle ground of his life is stuck somewhere with Nate, somewhere down the line of his back, the tight muscle in his thighs, the curve of his spine. 

"You're getting soft," Ray says, on a laugh, distracting, "go run outside like a real man."

"I'm ten times the man you'll ever be," Brad says, easy, while he toes off his errant sock. He means to add,  _your mother is ten times the man you'll ever be,_ because it's the sort of thing that Ray has to be told on a regular basis, except Ray cuts over him before he can say it.

"That's what I hear by way of our favorite LT," Ray says, laughing -- because that, it's a running joke, but Brad --

Brad hangs up. He turns off his phone, lets Ray think the battery died. They all have experience with that issue.) 

  
-

  
The thing is, though, Nate doesn't call, and Brad thinks about him, too much, not enough. It gets to the point where Brad gets used to it, he makes do with the people around him, with his apartment, with running on his ("fucking pansy-ass yuppie exercise equipment", as provided through the grapevine,) treadmill, with running outside, with eating anything not in a packet or resembling a MRE. 

He occupies himself. 

Which is why it's a gigantic fucking surprise when Nate actually calls. 

"Brad," Nate says, tinny and -- fuck, Brad knows exactly who it is before Nate can even say anything else.

"Nate," Brad says, schooling his voice into toneless way too late, thinking of Nate's lips forming his name, thinking back to all the ways Nate had said his name before: an order, a greeting, dragging them down Brad's neck because it was the closest expanse of skin he could get to as he came over Brad's fingers. 

"I've heard a lot about you," Nate says, after a pause. 

Brad rolls his eyes, walks from his kitchen to his couch sort of blindly. "We've been trained to be a bunch of gossiping schoolgirls as much as anything else," he says, because it's true, and he doesn't have to wonder what, exactly, Nate has been hearing about him. He can't think of the best way to put everything he'd like to say to Nate. Part of him wants to be angry -- except he's holding his phone pretty tight, making sure Nate's voice doesn't slip away from his ear. 

"So your number washed off my hand," Nate says, after another pause. The air in Brad's apartment feels heavy, and he flexes his fingers around his phone.

Brad doesn't say anything. Nate is trained -- he should have memorized it, there shouldn't be excuses, Brad should be halfway across the country right now --

"I had to get your number from Ray," Nate says.

"Poor you," Brad says. 

"Hey Brad," Nate says, and Brad looks at his feet -- clean, fresh, not in boots or socks or -- "Brad, I've got a lot of room in my apartment right now."

Brad won't go halfway across the country for Nate, for Nate and his face, and his lips and his laughs that start dry in his throat. He won't go because of the way they never had enough fucking time, the way they'd have all the time in the world, now, practically --

"Ray said it might take an order to get you over here," Nate says, to Brad's silence. 

"You can't listen to anything Ray says," Brad says, sharp but on a laugh, and fuck if he can't remember the last time he's laughed so easily, it's like a breath, "and I'm not obligated to take orders from you anymore, LT."

Brad can practically hear Nate's answering grin over the phone, and Brad's situation is so fucked, up the ass with explosives and no rig lube or water, fucking Nate Fick. 

"Come out here," Nate says. 

"Is that an order?" Brad asks, because he really, really doesn't need to be told twice, but. He sort of does.

"Thought you just said you didn't take those, Colbert," Nate says. 

"Is it?" Brad asks, again, more urgent than he means to.

"It's more than an order," Nate says, after a pause, his voice different, and -- Brad hangs up.

  
-

  
It's pitch black outside Nate's apartment complex. Inside, the hallway is full with filtered yellow light. 

Nate opens the door for him, shirtless, sockless, and frustratingly not pantsless. (Brad can hope for those sorts of things.)

"When you hung up," Nate says, "I figured there was a roughly sixty percent chance of finding you in my doorway sooner than later."

"That's not much of a chance. You underestimate me," Brad says, and it's the best hello he can give. 

"I underestimate myself more than I underestimate you," Nate says, stepping backwards to let Brad in. "I didn't want to think about the other reasons you might have hung up." 

"You think a lot about me, sir?" Brad asks, setting his bags down, turning, grinning quick -- Nate backs him against the closed door before Brad realizes what's happening. 

"I tried not to," Nate says, his lips hovering over the edge of Brad's jaw, fuck. "For months."

"Tried that too," Brad says, "fucking doesn't work."

Nate looks up at him -- up, and right in front of him, his eyes and his lips and the line of his jaw -- Brad's memory didn't even do him justice, didn't prepare him for this, for Nate's chest up against his, just Brad's shirt between them, the least amount of material Brad remembers ever being between them. 

"Fucking doesn't," Nate agrees, and they'll talk later, they'll do everything later, but right now there isn't almost a year between them -- there is just a shirt, and Nate's hands are already taking care of that. 

Brad doesn't think about anything, especially the west coast, especially going home, ever -- because, hell, Nate's lips feel more like home than going back to his empty apartment ever did, and the way he opens his mouth around a low groan is all Brad needs, now. Nate's mouth back on his own is like an order in itself, and Brad is more than fine with taking it, reaching around bury his fingers in the extra inch of Nate's hair.


End file.
